The Sound Projector Interview

Is it true there might be a spiritual dimension to the music of The Fires of the Borderlands?

Yes - only I don't be-labour the point From the press releases, people now expect me to be wearing a hair shirt and chanting all day,

Which isn't true. It is necessary to enter a sort of trance when playing, only not in a contrived way. If the music's doing something, I'll follow it; if not, the piece won't go any further. When a piece is first beginning, I'll see if it holds my attention, whether it will open out and suggest other possibilities. Everything's inherent in the music. It doesn't happen very often! The process is something personal. but I can't elaborate any further. I wouldn't say it's anything particularly unique to me.

In a way this goes back to the very beginnings of when I decided to do music instead of art because I was fed up with the institutionalisation of art The only objective of Art College, it seemed to me, was to beat any originality or creativity out of you. 1 started getting involved in music through hearing Stockhausen. The idea of providing written directions to the musicians, instead of conventionally scored sheet music, was interesting - for example, 'Think of a sound and hear it before you start playing it'. At Art College I met other people who felt the same. We formed a trio and performed some Stockhausen piano pieces at a concert hall. We were dressed m formal gear with dicky bows and had these Bosendorfer grand pianos!

This was at Sunderland Art College, about 1973-1977 when I was studying there. There was a loosely-described 'Experimental' course, and I started doing music there because there was a less rigorous approach than on the painting side. Music was one of the options. A good teacher had been brought in - Dave Pinder. He was a modern electronic composer. He played me lots of stuff I'd never heard. At the same time. I was getting into the German Rock scene, hearing Can. Cluster and Neu! Of course, a lot of those bands had been influenced by, or worked with, Stockhausen anyway - like Holger Czukay. When I heard Canaxis-5 it was an inspiration - that's still a favourite record. I felt I was going completely away from my previous musical tastes - well not completely away, because I still liked most of Frank Zappa. Hot Rats was the first LP I ever bought. A lot of Zappa s music still stands up, but I think he was difficult to work with - a bit of a tartar for getting it right!

Are you still interested in visual art?

Well. I still paint but it took me a long time after leaving Art School before I got into it again. They didn't understand what I wanted to do at Sunderland. The situation became very antagonistic - on both sides. Eventually they pulled the plug on me! I'd completed two years worth of musical work, which at the time I'd been told would be acceptable towards the final degree. Then they changed their minds. I found I had only three months to put together enough work for a visual show. I almost said 'Sod it' and gave up altogether. But then I got into print-making, especially etching and lithography - because I could do it fast The print tutor showed me how I could produce stuff quickly, and I still like print-making today - I love all the smells in a print workshop! So yes, I eventually got my degree, but it didn't feel at all satisfactory.

It was a very weird situation at Sunderland - they tried to get me thrown off the course, on grounds of morality! I'm still not sure how it all came about. There was one guy who had been a Deputy Head and suddenly was promoted to Head of the entire School. This guy really had it in for me, I think. To him, the Christian Faith was everything; and so I got into an argument with him one day at one of the subsidiary subject classes, where I spoke against the conventional idea of God - that there wasn't this bearded gentleman living in the sky! And so they tried to chuck me out - because I didn't believe in God! Looking back, it felt like some horrible story that Philip K. Dick might have written. The total absurdity of it. There's a Newcastle-based painter I still like - Kirill Sokolov, he's a Russian guy, in his late 60s, he's a good friend. His work is as important as anyone else's. He has shows all over the world. He was born in Stalinist Russia, and when he left the country the documentation got lost so he's not sure precisely how old he is. We met at a print-making workshop. He paints 300 pictures a week - literally! He said the percentage of good ones goes up, the more paintings you do - so maybe out of 300 paintings about 10 or 15 percent will be really good.

Do you prefer abstract art?

I've gone both ways on that. At one time I didn't understand abstract art at all - I just couldn't see it. Then, through my friends at Art College, a blindfold came off. These two friends of mine were doing some Post Abstract-Expressionist stuff - the same people I did the music with. So through playing music with them, I found I could understand the abstract art. Then, at one time I declared there was no point at all in painting realistic stuff - but I've come back to accepting figurative art, mainly through Kirill.

Your sleeve art for Borderlands hints at a knowledge of early art and symbolism...

I don't deliberately nick other images for my paintings. A lot of them evolved like the music - found objects were used. I like symbols. You put them in a painting without knowing what they are and later you find out they're centuries old, and come from all different cultures. The collective subconsciousness - that interests me. There's a lot of it in music too. A lot of musical phrases could have come from almost anywhere. You hear a piece of early Chinese music, and some of the phrases there could be taken from Irish music. It doesn't even have to be played on any particular instrument. The more ancient and original a music is, the more common elements are there.

It's true there's a certain snobbery and elitism creeps into the Western attitude towards ethnic music, which can dismiss other cultures. On the other hand, I have very mixed feelings about this music being plundered. In today's scene where ethnic music is often sampled on records, in a lot of cases it's merely being used as a novelty aspect. It sort of cheapens the music. There's no respect for the culture. Florian Fricke, on the other hand - yes, there is more integrity in his work. Hosianna Mantra - that's a perfectly beautiful album and I like all the Werner Herzog movie music too.

One thing that knocked my socks off was a piece of music I saw on a TV programme. It was in China, in the 1970s; western camera crews were going in, but there was an embargo on what they could and could not film. So this piece I saw was covert filming, and it was smuggled out of the country. They found this old hermit living up this mountain. He played this piece of music - it was something that was not supposed to be heard. It should be played to the whole world. He was 70 years old, he played it on this two-string banjo-like instrument and it was utterly and totally incredible. That music was about 3,000 years old. It lasted about four minutes and it was perfection. Luckily. I have it on tape. I reckon Mozart was probably a genius, but hearing that Chinese hermit - the Western perception of genius was made to look a bit silly.

The Sound Projector (July 1998)